Trans-Mississippi Exposition – Omaha: 1898 – Images from the Oglala Sioux Tribe

From Wikipedia: The Indian Congress occurred from August 4 to October 31, 1898 in Omaha, Nebraska, in conjunction with the Trans-Mississippi International Exposition. Occurring within a decade of the end of the Indian Wars, the Indian Congress was the largest gathering of American Indian tribes of its kind to that date. 35 individual tribes were represented by more than 500 Indians. The Rinehart & Muhr photographs of the Indian Congress participants are regarded as one of the best photographic documentations of American Indian leaders around the start of the 20th century. Speaking of his photos of the Indian Congress, Merry Foresta, director of the Smithsonian Photography Initiative at the Smithsonian Institution said, “Rinehart’s portraits are really quite extraordinary and put him above the average workaday photographer who might have also made photographs for similar reasons. There were other people working, but he seems to have really, because of the quality of his work, stood apart.”

This video gallery contains images taken at the Trans-Mississippi Exposition Indian Congress by F. A. Rinehart and Adolph Muhr. These images come from the Library of Congress and the book “Rinehart’s Indians” published in Omaha in 1899 in which he identified the photos by names and tribes.

Music: “A Portrait in Time” by Aakash Ghandi – YouTube audio.